


In Every Castle, a Garden

by pseudofaux



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Beauty and the Beast, Dimitri really really needs an anti-anxiety regimen, Dimitri: perma-ruffled, F/M, Hilda: cannot be ruffled, chillda, dimitri Very Deeply needs an anti-anxiety regimen, quickburn but soft, should be pretty fluffy even as it earns the M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27234106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudofaux/pseuds/pseudofaux
Summary: Dimitri has settled into kingship nicely enough. The Holy Kingdom prospers.The next logical step is arranged with his consent, but practically none of his involvement. So when his bride-to-be comes to Fhirdiad, he's moreawarethan he isready.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Hilda Valentine Goneril
Comments: 18
Kudos: 48





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> I just! Need them to be together and help each other be their best lovey selves! So here we are. :) Planning to get this to M by chapter 4 at the latest.

She arrives late in the afternoon, accompanied by a retinue but not by her brother, and Dimitri is still not sure what to do with or how to talk to his bride to be without some representative. They’ve only written a letter each. Things are not aggrieved, they both consented to the match without pressure, but… she is such a lady. She is even wearing a traveling gown. He does not know how much affection she thinks is reasonable and he curses himself for not asking in his letter (but how would he have asked, honestly, he knows himself well enough for the futility of the thought to weigh significantly in his brain as he looks down at the rings on her hand and wonders if he should take it, kiss it, or not touch her at all). 

“Well, hello,” she says brightly.

“Hello,” he says back, trying to smile a reasonable amount. His voice does not shake! A good start. She is a little taller than he remembers her being, and her hair makes her look taller still, but she is somehow dainty. It’s been a long time since there was a dainty woman in the royal family.

Hilda clears her throat and he realizes he has lost time right there in front of her, and he bows to cover himself. Should he extend his hand to help her with the steps? Would that be too forward? Would it be rude not to?

“These steps are magnificent,” she says. There is so much enthusiasm in her voice he thinks perhaps she is interested in architecture. “Would you mind giving me a hand? I’ve been sitting all day on the way here.”

“Of course!” he tries not to shout but she is clearly surprised and then he has to try not to wince, and be grateful they were at least outside. And that Felix is not here for another few days.

Slowly, he tells himself, slowly he puts out his arm for her to take instead of shooting it out from his side. She takes it without any hesitation. The rings on her fingers glitter in the early summer air-- it’s a very pleasant day, he’s glad there was good weather for her arrival. There are no tumbles on the steps, and he doesn’t stomp, and when they walk between the guards posted at the main doorway, and he leans to her and (carefully) whispers “Welcome,” she giggles. He feels ten feel tall in a _good_ way for once.

* * *

There are balls for this sort of thing, dances for every step of every kind of courtship, even an arranged match like theirs. He’s not a natural dancer, but he has practiced, determined to honor her as his intended. 

If there are words to describe her body, he thinks they must be _healthy_ and _buxom_ even though those are not appropriate things for him to think. Of course she is beautiful (and of course he knows it! She has been called the loveliest woman in Fódlan, and when he saw her coming out of the carriage he thought _not every rumor is wrong_ , despite all the best Blaiddyd edicts of his upbringing). She has grown into her nobility as she has become a woman. He can’t stop himself from wondering what she thinks of him, but he is prepared to never know, and he will certainly never press her.

She is, of course, a very natural dancer, so natural they are moving well enough to chat. Her middle name is Valentine. The word seems like an assassin to him, somehow delicate and capable of great damage all at once. She herself is so feminine and so very capable of great, sweeping violence. He did not pay much attention to her when they were students at the monastery— different houses, different regions, entirely different types of people— but he remembers seeing her wield an axe. When she commits, she uses all the muscles of her back and arms to bring down destruction. He wonders if she trains, if she likes training, but instead they talk about their names and the names of their friends. They are both careful to skirt the names of those they know to be dead. Things are very new between them. But it goes well enough.

Her gown leaves little to the imagination, but it does not show him the muscles he wonders about. It shows ample cleavage, and the way the neckline is shaped and her earrings are large make her throat look tinier than it can possibly be (one hand, he is certain he could put one of his hands the whole way around it if it were truly so small). Long silk sleeves of a pink color, he knows it must match a flower but he doesn’t know anything about flowers, really. 

After their dancing she is smiling, nicely, gently, and he realizes there is some slick color on her lips that matches her sleeves, and it makes his tongue too big for his mouth. Dimitri can’t name a flower for it, but he realizes he has seen the color in the sky at so many dawns. He wonders if he shared that, if she would like it? He wonders if she is an early riser.

* * *

She must be a late sleeper. A very, very late sleeper. Eventually he cannot stand his concern that something has happened to her, and goes to her rooms before he can worry himself out of the trip. When you are king, propriety follows you, he has learned, and he never abuses that so he tells himself that this one time must be fine, he’s just _worried_ about her. And he doesn’t want to bother anyone else by asking.

Her door is open, and there are ladies’ voices pouring calmly out of the doorway. Nothing seems amiss. He can hear _her_ voice, too, so she is fine. Perhaps the long travel and then the party exhausted her, that would be perfectly understandable. Why was he so fretful? Now he must announce himself, as etiquette dictates. He would never eavesdrop, it wouldn’t be honorable. 

He coughs into his hand. The voices are laughing and then talking, and he doesn’t think they heard him. He tries again, but the sound feels like it becomes tinier in his chest, lost there and completely unable to be heard. He has tried all his life not to be a coward, so he tries again. 

“Excuse me,” says the king in his palace, but the voices do not hear him. He can barely hear himself. He doesn’t want to hide, he just feels dreadfully big and lumbering and doesn’t want to shout, he would feel terrible if he startled them. Moments ago this seemed like exactly the right and necessary thing to do. Now he wishes he had sent someone-- or, no, _brought_ someone, _anyone_ with him, anyone without all this worry over every single thing he does or sound he makes.

The king of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus is so busy modulating the sound of clearing his own throat that even though he is looking down, he trips over an empty basin used for bathwater as he steps into the rooms of his soon to be wife. His arms successfully land on the ground to keep him from rolling, but they do so with an extremely loud thud. Some floors in the palace are stone, but her rooms have wood floors. The sound is tremendous. He can feel it in his own tense muscles and every bone of his back and in his hot, hot face. He does not want to die but he wants very badly to vanish. 

“Dimitri, are you _okay_?” she is asking into the silence, and her ladies are already running to him, begging his pardon as they try to pull him up by the arms. He whispers-- tries very hard to whisper-- that they don’t have to bother, he’s so sorry, are they alright? but they are clucking over him like the sweet brown hens that populate the coops beside the castle, and goddess, he wishes he could crawl under a piece of furniture and hide there as well as he did once beneath one of those coops. 

When he laughs nervously it sounds stern instead, and he looks up in time to see the ladies instantly remove their hands and duck little curtsies and step back. He feels awful. “Dimitri?” Hilda asks again, and he looks up at her and oh, heavens, she's standing in one of the bathtubs the palace staff move around, and there is only the short robe, and it is sticking to her wet arms and it is not at all securely shut. Buxom, _buxom_ , and from her throat to the unhelpful tie she is slick with flower-scented water that catches the brightness pouring in through the windows as though her body means to gift it to the sky. She _does_ have muscles, are they soft or is her body firm?

**_What is he thinking?!_ **

“I am so very sorry,” he declares, his head jerking down with the final word. “I-- worried. I tried.”

“I’m fine,” Hilda says, as though everything is fine. “But now I’m worried about you,” as though they are sharing a joke, but they are not, so she must be laughing at him and maybe now he wants to die, a little bit. He feels like this room, the tallest of all the rooms in the castle, that’s why he chose it for her, is too small, and he is going to break the ceiling or the floor or some other important part of it, just by staying there. He is so heavy and stupid.

“Nothing to worry about,” he says immediately. He drops a deep bow and flees the room, telling himself to mind the bucket and count slowly and time his steps to it. Soft steps. Soft steps. Don’t stomp. He deserves every giggle he hears until he is far enough away that he can't hear them any more.

Her bathwater smelled like flowers, he thinks, but he doesn’t know what kind. How long does that sort of thing linger on a lady's skin, and can a person with a good nose smell it longer than a normal person?


	2. Stonesworth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hilda's never gonna let this poor man fret for long. He'll fret A LOT until she gets to him, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hilda's birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABEASAURUS REGINA!) calls for pulling this chapter out of drafts and forcing the rough bits together!

Less than an hour goes by before he receives a message. It’s her handwriting, so he supposes it is her second letter, and only goodbye. He fights the urge to slouch in his chair and protect his innards from the pain he is about to endure. His own fault, this is entirely his fault. The shame hasn’t left his face, and behind his eyepatch an unpleasant heat has concentrated, humid from the frustration of a trapped tear. That strange part of his brain that still whispers how much he deserves constant torment falls into this discomfort like a bed and sighs in a penitent’s contentment while he sighs in dread. 

Hells. He dismisses the page who brought him the tiny bit of parchment, folded and sealed. She was here enough, _comfortable_ enough, to unpack her seal and wax, and he walked in on her bathing, robbing her of security in her new home. If he was not so sure the proper thing is to stay away from her he would go back immediately, apologize earnestly, and put himself at her feet. 

Instead, he stays right where he is, and the second the page closes the door, he gives in to the slouch. As much as the chair and his size allow. Dimitri will read the letter— he cannot even think of not reading it— but here’s another kingly comfort he’ll take because he can: witnessing the breaking of his engagement via couriered note, come to him from across his castle. It’s her seal, so she was brave enough to write him herself. He’ll be brave enough to break it and his own silly heart.

Who set the building up this way, that the work rooms and receiving spaces are so far from the living areas? Bless their mind and memory. Even twisted in knots as he is, he’s already a little sad to be away from her. At the same time, he could not be more grateful to be as far away from her as he is. For just a moment he had truly considered going straight to the stables and riding away, anywhere, _away_. She is so clearly her own person, he thinks… maybe... she herself will be fine, but her brother will of course hear and things will change, become worse than they were before the engagement. It will all go entirely to frost. He needs advisors, he really needs better advisors. He was good at war, but the war is over now. He needs to be a better person.

Dimitri has made an attempt at it: he has been resisting the urge to sniff the letter. But in his struggle to fit his finger into the parchment to pull the seal away without breaking it too badly, her scent coils into the air. It soothes and wounds and soothes again. There’s the gentle snap of wax and then it _really_ hits him. His eye rolls back into his head before it can focus on a single word. She’s not a magic user, not that he remembers or that she’s mentioned, but he swears the scent blooms unnaturally lush and mouthwatering in the room he has made for correspondence and books. Only last week he thought the room had begun to smell _right_ , all the books aging and purifying the space. Now it is as though pink flowers on an unstoppable vine are curling over the edge of every shelf and the corners of his desk, opening themselves to the air and showing him how wrong he had been about what could be right, and all he’ll be lonely for as soon as he manages to read her goodbye. 

It’s not that he wants to consume it, he doesn’t want the flower or the scent in his mouth, what good would they do him there? But something about it makes him aware of his own tongue as he swallows, makes the slight massage of it against the roof of his mouth distract him. This isn’t like him, it is really more like her. He’s certain she has that kind of awareness of herself, that she has noticed these sorts of things for so long they are nothing to her. She is so at home in her own skin. It’s one of the loveliest things about her. 

Her own skin, _Valentine_ , her. Pink and lush and lovely. For just a moment he lets his tongue rub the roof of his mouth so he can feel it on purpose, and he remembers the swells and dips of her body and her robe so thin against wet flesh it looked as though what water lingered from her bath was dissolving it, and he smells her perfume and her _being_ on the letter she has sent—

The letter she has sent. 

He slams it onto the desk with both hands, palms slapping the varnish so hard he is worried he has cracked it again. His tongue is clamped between his back teeth and his face feels as though it is singed, he is so foolish. Even in private, he cannot help but embarrass himself. Dimitri doesn’t want to be an animal, but in these times when he feels like such a poor attempt at a man… he thinks sadly of the freedom of beasts. There are no goodbye letters exchanged between beasts. 

He takes a very deep breath, holds it in himself, and slowly expels the gentle fragrance, willing himself to let her go, even though she has only so recently arrived. 

She had written his name, scratched through it, and then he thinks she may have begun to write it again but that second line is scratched through so thickly he cannot be sure. Below the attempts, the letter reads:

_Your Highness,_

_I hope you are alright. Sorry about the buckets! I’m fine._

_Everyone here is nice and has taken good care of me._

_Please let me know you are okay._

_Hilda Valentine Goneril_

It’s not the same way she wrote to him before, or quite how she has spoken to him since she arrived. There is something gentle and knowing in the way she has put together her words, like she is a farrier and he is a yearling. Or maybe she is scared of him and trying to keep him calm. Which is it?!

He rereads it, and the anticipation and satisfaction of his favorite parts soothes him. _...taken good care of me…_ **_Valentine_ ** _… taken good care of me._ He can’t piece together the entire meaning, because what his heart takes from the words is self-indulgent to the point of gluttony. He looks the whole parchment over carefully, in case there is some postscript where she clarifies her fury. And their annulment. 

But all he finds under her name is the same sigil he remembers from her first letter. A stylized flower on a stem with one wide leaf. A lady’s illustration, even though the stem is curved like the edge of an axeblade. 

He stares at it until that curve swims in his vision and he gasps in air, a stupid man who has forgotten even to breathe. His pulse is so desperate and loud in his own ears it sounds like someone is knocking on the dark, heavy wood of the door: thump thump _knock_ knockknock thump. 

If it was a knock, that makes sense, because the door is opening with as much confidence as those knuckles rapped the door. Saints, what he wouldn’t give to be able to knock so normally. He always has to put one hand in the other and remember a nursery rhyme. 

Her hands are at the end of black sleeves, and they are clasped together in front of her. She is in his office. She is fully dressed, and in his office, and there are no buckets on the floor. He hopes.

“Did you get my note?” she asks. He holds it up, so focused on making his grip a gentle one that he is unable to make words in front of her. Surely he looks like a big dumb animal. Maybe she likes big dumb animals, because she smiles and says “Good, then. Come walk with me.” It’s not a question. She masterfully gentles her words, though, so the expectation lays on him very lightly. One day he hopes he’ll learn how to do that without having to offer a dozen follow up phrases. 

It’s also no question that he’ll go. He smoothes the paper on the desk as he stands, not sure if he should take it, leave it, or perhaps tell her he is late for a meeting and then push his body through the glass and grate of the window. He chooses to be confused and miserable before he is a coward. He follows her out, stuffing the letter into a pocket, wincing as it crumples. When she looks over her shoulder he is caught in the middle of it and again feels like a hulking _idiot_. 

She does not call him one. She only asks, “Can you show me how to get to the ramparts, please?”

Grateful for the instruction and too unsure even to apologize, he nods with what feels like his entire upper body and gestures to the left. They walk without speaking but not in silence, because even on the carpet of the hall there’s a thud and slight clank, sometimes a jangle, with each of his steps.

He cherishes what’s left of Blaiddyd tradition, but sometimes he thinks hell is regalia. He just wants to be able to be quiet and go unnoticed at this critical moment. And then he feels bad for even thinking it. He is so, so weary of this cycle.

They are outside before he expects, even though he took them there. The day is bright and clear, the air clean like winter though the chill of it is still a few weeks away. They pass a pair of guards, who smarten to attention and then bow to them both, and she gracefully dips her head but says nothing and does not slow her steps. He follows in her wake, trying not to gawp. She’s worn a long dress of red with those black sleeves. The skirt is gauzy, a war flag that flutters around her legs. 

He can see her legs clearly through the fabric, every bit of them from her knees to her slippers. For the first time in a long time he remembers she wore boots in combat. He wonders if she likes to ride horses, if she has riding boots? Idle thoughts buoy up in his brain despite him knowing better than to wonder at such things. He tries to remind himself of what happened just this morning without thinking of seeing her nearly naked. His failure is spectacular in every sense.

She stops when they’re between sentry posts, like someone who knows the ramparts much better than someone who would need to be taken to them. 

“You seem very uncomfortable,” she says. And then she doesn’t say anything else. It is a prompt, he thinks, but maybe it is a challenge instead? Her letter said she was fine. A test?

“That’s… correct,” Dimitri confesses. “Again, I am so sorry—”

She waves one of her hands in soft dismissal and he shuts up. Manners mean paying attention to what is in front of you more than following rules. His stepmother taught him that a long time ago. One of her few lessons, and the best. He only wants to make people feel at ease, unless they are enemies. He tells himself she is not his enemy, and if she is, it’s because he’s wronged her. 

Her head tilts a little, keen like a hound. As assessing as one, too. “Are you worried about the engagement?” she asks. He nods instantly. 

“Dimitri,” she says a bit softly, like his name or its use is a secret, “I’m not leaving you over _that_ , goodness. Are you so sensitive about the human body?”

He’s trying to come up with a way to start explaining when she laughs, the sound very free in the air around them. Like a kite. Like the hopeful bubbles in his brain. Free and unashamed to float. 

She hums and it turns into a giggle. “I can see that you are. Sorry, I don’t mean to tease you too much.”

He opens his mouth, but gives up quickly. He has no words to give to her about that. It would be nice to tell her that when he was a child, he had friends, and they were normal with one another and he misses it, and a part of him has been hoping that whoever is wife would be, eventually they would have a comfort between them that allowed for teasing, even if nothing else. Dimitri isn’t sure of many feelings but he’s certain that his nerves are partly due to isolation and if he could just have a person to share harmless secrets with, surely he could calm down. 

Hilda Valentine Goneril is looking right at him, and perhaps she has been this entire time. “I’m not ashamed of my body,” she declares. “Or that you saw it. We’ll see each other in less at some point, right?”

And his brain, that bubbly, treacherous thing, feeds him the warmest spoonful of the dream she seems to expect: their bodies sharing a bath, one of the large permanent ones at the retreat not far from the castle. Steam swirling around them like snow. Actual snow swirling around them as they share a cloak with a dark fur ruff, warm in the cold, cheeks pink and smiling. She is so small and joyful and unashamed, dwarfed by the fabric, hair loose and bright against an imagined winter evening. 

He wonders if she knows how to pack snow in her hands to throw at friends, or any of the winter games he played with Glenn and Sylvain and Felix and Ingrid. 

“Dimitri. Right?” she asks, like she is going to laugh again. His eyes focus on the large jewel draped from her throat. It’s framed by tiny loops of black metal, like lace. He doesn’t know any more about jewelry than he does about flowers, and the valuable stones he knows best are whetstones and bricks. But he knows he likes what she is wearing, the boldness of the stone surrounded by darkened steel swirls so small they might rightly be called shavings instead of pieces.

“Right,” he says, knowing he’ll have to actually think about that later and that he should make sure he is alone when he does. “That jewelry, it’s… something else. Very pretty,” he adds quickly, desperate to be clear. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She beams at him with a pleasure that’s just a little bit smug, and it feels like a cat's pride, like she is sharing that with him, not using it to put space between them. “You like it? You’re sweet! I designed this,” she tells him, fingering the edge of the setting around the red stone. “I like to do that,” she confesses quietly. “I think I’m good at it.”

It’s the first time he’s ever seen her shy. It makes his heartbeat echo in his ribs differently than it usually does, more like a gentle knock on a door. The way a thing is supposed to sound before it opens. “You are,” he assures her. “I like it.”

She fixes him with her gaze like she expects he is making fun of her, but before he can insist otherwise she is smiling even wider, teeth bright and gently pressed against her tongue, which peeks out as though her smile is too big to hide it. It’s still elegant but there’s something honest and open in the gesture that makes him feel connected to her, like they actually belong to the same species. 

The air of not-yet-winter pulls at her beautiful hair. It sends pieces in front of her face, and though he longs to touch it or use the size of his hand for good for once and shield her from the wind, he only stands before her and looks at her until the wind dies down. He can’t bear to lose sight of her smile. It is worth more than a thousand whetstones. And those he knows quite well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite the long time between chapters this is NOT abandoned-- I _neeeeeeed_ them together. And when I am done I'm writing a side story where Marianne comes to visit and they all fall into bed together.


End file.
